Archaeologists use new methods to explore move from hunting, gathering to farming

One of the enduring mysteries of the human experience is how and why humans moved from hunting and gathering to farming. 

Arizona State University. From their beginnings humans, like other mammals, depended on wild resources for sustenance. Then between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, in a transitional event known as the Neolithic Revolution, they began to create and tend domestic ecosystems in various locations around the world, and agriculture was born.

Despite decades of research into this major human advancement, scientists still don't know what propelled it.

The recent work of a research team led by Arizona State University postdoc Isaac Ullah narrows the mystery by showing what variables might have affected the transition.

Ullah is an archaeologist in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Most of his research uses dynamical systems theory (DST) and centers on understanding the ways in which human societies changed with the advent of plant and animal domestication. [...] EurekAlert!